Isolated experiences are meaningless. BMWs are rare in Calgary and it's likely that many of them remain in service when they should be scrapped far longer than they should, or salvage cars are brought in for profit. The Dodge Neon was rated as the most unreliable car in its day. My family had two in the late 90's for 6 years. Never had a SINGLE problem with either one of them.

I'm sorry you got a lemon and I'm happy that you got rid of the car and are happy now with your Toyota (I've got one myself and I love it to death - the feeling that it will never let me down is not a small part of that) but take it easy with labelling an entire brand.